


At Least It Was There

by ratherbefree



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, S6 Tag, i was feeling emotional ok, not really relationship-y
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7080109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherbefree/pseuds/ratherbefree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to the old Study Group, once Greendale is no longer where they belong. </p><p>(Post-S6)</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Least It Was There

**Author's Note:**

> started writing this as a sort of word-dump bc yesterday (2nd June) was the one-year anniversary of S6 ending and i was rly emotional about these characters
> 
> essentially a headcanon fic

Greendale never does become the best community college in the Denver area, as Craig had once hoped. It does, however, surpass City College as the most popular community college in Greendale, and he guesses that’s enough of a bang to go out on.

He takes early retirement at the age of 51, and makes plans to travel the world, though in the end he only makes it to Canada. 

Montréal is beautiful and classy, all the things he wished for when he was still in Colorado. After a few months of living there, he is happy to say he can speak limited French, and the locals only barely sneer at his accent. 

A man briefly enters his life; Alexandre, 4 years younger, gorgeous dark hair and eyes. For a while their brief relationship is enough, but when he is contacted by seniors to perform an _It Gets Better_ speech at his old school, he decides not to return to Canada. 

Alex hasn’t the attention span for long-distance, and anyway, Craig is too preoccupied by the school board’s activities to care.

One day, he passes by Study Room F and, by chance, looks in. The group of 8 sat at the front table are simultaneously all too familiar and far too strange to comprehend, so he takes his mind off things by preparing an Alumni Dance. 

* * *

Jeff doesn’t entirely believe Annie when she promises to come back after the Summer. Their swift goodbye at the airport is light and breezy, and he spends the majority of his time alternating between preparing next year’s curriculum, hanging out with Britta, Frankie, and the Dean, and replaying the final moments of The Old Group over and over.

He tells himself he should be happy for his friends. Annie is pursuing her dreams. Abed is building a name for himself. Shirley is finally spending as much time with her family as she wants. Troy is _literally traveling around the fucking world._

(And he _is_ happy. He is, he is, he is. It just stings, just a little. He’s spent his entire life doing what he _thinks_ he wants, thinks he _should_ want, and somehow even that isn’t enough for him. His friends are moving on. He’s stuck in a dead-end job, dead-end situation, dead-end life.) 

So it feels sort of surreal when he stands in the airport 10 weeks later, scanning the crowds for the top of her head. She must spot him before he sees her, because before he even has time to blink, she’s nearly reached him, walking powerfully, like she knows what she wants, knows what she needs. 

He tenses up in anticipation of the rejection he knows is coming. The _sorry, but. This was really nice of you, but. You’re a great friend, but._

They meet in the middle of DIA and he stands there, motionless, like a fucking idiot. She reaches up to cup his face, like she’s checking he’s really there, and Jeff stops breathing for a solid minute. Then Annie fumbles for a short moment, eventually deciding on using his ears as handles to pull his head closer to hers, and she’s kissing  him, she’s kissing him, holy shit holy shit holy shit-

(Of course there’s a lot of confusion after that. And after _that,_ a whole load of Talking. But he walks out of the airport with her hand in his, and kisses her goodnight at her apartment, and maybe it’ll be okay after all.)

(Their friends aren’t supportive, not all of them, not at first. An argument with Britta ends with broken glass and a spilled drink, which some poor bar janitor is presumably underpaid to clean up after. They come around after a few months, once it looks like their relationship is Becoming Serious. They’re happy for him. They’re happy for Annie.)

(He goes all-out to ask her to the Alumni Dance, treating the whole thing like it’s freshman prom, and she rolls her eyes but cries a little after they kiss under the fairy lights. It still feels the same. He’s 36 and terrified of the future. He’s 44 and grateful for the present.) 

* * *

So her dream of becoming a licensed psychologist never really pans out.

She meanders through the corridors of Greendale for another couple years, not really caring how much of her life she’s ~~wasted~~ spent there, picking up extra shifts at the Vatican whenever she can, and inadvertently working her way up through the ranks until, at the age of 36, she is all set to surpass the owner as manager.

Somehow, for Britta, that is the final straw.

She cuts her hair and gets a small, barely noticeable tattoo on her ankle. She moves into a new apartment. She adopts another cat. 

It’s not enough.

God, she always thought that having a midlife crisis was all about feeling _alive_ , feeling _free,_ but she’s never felt more stuck, more boring, more pointless.

On a (slightly drunken) whim, she decides to pursue a career in counselling. As her degree is from a shitty community college, her only option is to find an equally shitty school. After a year or so of plain unemployment, she finds work as a 7th Grade counsellor in an overcrowded middle school a couple miles from her parents’ home.

The job is tough but fulfilling. She helps out kids with their benign problems - crushes, friends, proms, and petty arguments - and sometimes _they actually listen to her._ She wears glasses when she feels like it, and no one says a thing. 

At 40 she masks her emerging grey hairs with streaks of purple. She never fancied herself as the wife-and-mother type, but as she is bombarded with all her friends’ wedding invitations and baby pictures and domestic family Christmas cards, she starts to feel like maybe she’s missing out.

She discovers that the adoption process for kids is a whole lot more complicated than it is for cats. 12-year-old Amara comes first. Then, at 45, she and her daughter are joined by 7-year-old Caiden. Adopting older kids is tough, and sure, on occasion she has to call Shirley, sobbing down the phone and begging for advice, but then 14-year-old Amara calls her _mom_ for the first time, and she knows it’s worth it. It’s worth it.

Jeff repeatedly points out that she can no longer poke fun at him for changing his mind on marriage and family, but Britta just laughs. 

* * *

They stop off in New Zealand for a couple of months in 2016. Troy is now confident in bars, can order whichever damn beer he wants, and always abstains from drinking too much. He texts with his Greendale buddies and calls when he can; LeVar Burton no longer seems like the most terrifying person in the world; the ship is almost constantly filled with the noise of the crew, of the radio, of the sea… But despite this, he still feels an indescribable sense of _loneliness._

He meets Isla June in a loud Irish pub, somewhere near Wellington. They get talking, and when he tells her about his life back in Colorado - of paintballs, musicals, Ass-Crack Bandits, and a loveable group of misfits, teamed together through it all - she is the first person he’s met who believes him. 

She is 29 and waits tables and went to a real University, of course, but there’s nothing for her in her home country and she’s always wanted to visit America, anyway, so Troy doesn’t feel too guilty when he asks her to join him, to sail around the remaining half of the world, to visit new cultures and new places and new people - 

“And go back to America?” She asks, watching her home rush back across the water.

“Of course,” he replies, and means it.

At 28 he returns to Greendale. His friends are mostly gone, as he knew they would be. He and Isla make a trip to LA which begins as a 2-week holiday but turns into a year, during which he rekindles the relationship with the person who was once the most important in his life. Abed accepts him as partner, and together, they found _Cool Trobed Films._

After a couple of unsuccessful TV pitches, Troy uses some of his inheritance money to fund the production of _Hawthorne CC,_ a half-hour episodic webseries detailing the lives of a group of students in a community college, somewhere in Colorado. By pure accident (or perhaps fate?) it becomes the most well-loved endeavour _Cool Trobed Films_ ever makes.

* * *

Annie is accepted into U-of-D and plans to start attendance in 2016. Only a select few of her internship peers are offered a real job with the FBI, and she tries not to feel too upset when the director of the programme explains that her _education isn’t sufficient enough, please apply another time, sorry._

But she goes home to Greendale and takes a couple extra classes and works part-time in a small forensics laboratory in Denver, keeping busy enough that the time just flies by. 

Her _thing_ with Jeff takes a little time to get used to, though he does exceed most of her expectations. Britta strongly disagrees with her new relationship at first, as does Shirley, the latter of whom Annie refuses to speak to until just before Thanksgiving, after a particularly nasty argument ended up with her old friend admitting she didn’t believe Annie was mature enough to make the decision to date an older man. 

Britta comes round first, and shortly after she acquires her sixth cat, Annie decides to finally move in with her boyfriend. 

Although she never pictured herself marrying while she was still in her 20s, in the end she sees no real reason not to. The ceremony is lovely, but all of it - the rings, the paper, the _til death do us part_ \- is a mere formality as far as she is concerned.

The pregnancy is a complete accident. Thankfully, Sebastian Edison Winger (7.8lbs, 19.6”) is born in mid-June, nearly 3 months before she is set to begin her junior year. 

It’s all too surreal when she graduates as valedictorian - she has finally (partly) completed the goals she set out for herself at 13. Despite the parents and the pills and the breakdown, despite the failure she thought she experienced, she made it, she made it, she made it. 

Abed takes a photo: Annie, dressed in her gown, hordes of students behind her. Jeff by her side, grinning. Sebastian in his arms. 

Though she swore a long time ago she would never allow her parents back into her life, she breaks her rule just once. 

In early June 2020, Mr. and Ms. Edison each receive a plain white envelope, addressed in neat cursive. Upon opening, they find a glossy photo - a smiling man holding a blonde toddler, next to _their daughter,_ beaming at the camera. An identical phrase is written on the back of each photograph. 

_I did it._

* * *

His friends are Worried about him when he moves to LA. 

Of course, that’s not the only Emotion they Feel. They’re Happy too. He’s “living his dream.” Really. 

But they keep trying to warn him about the dangers of Los Angeles. Like he doesn’t know, like he doesn’t understand. (There’s many things in life he doesn’t understand, sure, but this? No.) 

Annie says it’s _gonna be tough out there._ Britta reminds him of the _high rate of mental illness in the professional creative industry._ Even Jeff tells him _watch yourself, there’s a ton of people there who would use and discard you in the blink of an eye._ Overall, they all just want him to be careful.

Sometimes, he thinks his friends view him as being naïve. But that’s okay.

So he moves out there anyway. The game show gig is great, pays great - although in LA terms, _great_ just means _good enough to be able to afford basic needs._

He stays in a studio apartment downtown, where it’s far noisier than Greendale. He arrives for work early every morning and leaves late every night. It’s good. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t _Feel_ like work. Loneliness doesn’t arrive. Not for a while, at least. 

Now that he has Grown And Changed As A Person, he finally thinks he has Evolved enough to be able to meet his half-siblings. When the game show really kicks off, when the paycheques coming in are verging on _impressive_ rather than just _great,_ he offers to pay for the flights of his mother and half-brothers up to LA. (NOT his step-father. After consulting briefly with Britta, he still is Not Ready for that.) 

They go to Disneyland together and he is Happy to find that they actually have more in common than he thought. His half-brothers are Normal, but they like Star Wars almost as much as him, and listen when he talks about it for the entirety of the hour-long drive back to his apartment. It’s surprisingly hard to say goodbye to them when they leave.

It all goes well until his boss pulls him in by the arm to a small back-office in their building. He explains, vaguely, that the _show might not be doing so good soon, maybe you should start looking for other gigs, just in case._

And he’s right - the show is cut after its third season, mid-2017. His brief period of unemployment nearly drives him to accept an offer as a producer for an indie movie. 

Then Troy comes back. He knows it’s silly to think that things could just go back to normal right away, so he doesn’t. Think that. 

Troy comes back with a girlfriend. Troy comes back with a large inheritance. Most importantly, Troy comes back and uses the large inheritance to start the company they always dreamed of starting together, back when they had handshakes and bunkbeds and pillow forts. (Blanket forts?)

And after a short time of mere mutual respect and thinly-veiled caution, Abed discovers that Isla watched _Xena: Warrior Princess_ in its original airing, and she promises to make a pilgrimage with him to Waitakere Ranges, where some parts were filmed. 

Their TV pitches are not well-received. _Too out-there. Too weird. Too convoluted. Too meta._

It is Troy’s idea to create a webseries loosely based upon their misadventures at Greendale. 

It takes off, and things are Great again.

Some changes aren’t a Bad thing.

* * *

It breaks her heart when Annie cuts ties with her. Deep down, Shirley knows it’s only a small argument; one that they will get over within a mere couple of months. They both just need some time to calm down. 

(It’s not that she didn’t see it coming, the two of them, but she never truly expected anything to come of it. Annie would, she thought, eventually get over her little infatuation, settling down with a nice boy closer to her own age. Jeff would quit his immoral curiosity about her, and perhaps end up with Britta - either way, there was no real reason for the pair to be together. It just didn’t make sense.)

What had started as a gentle warning became an old fight about whether or not Annie was able to make informed decisions for herself. Did Shirley still, after all this time, view her as the baby in the study group? 

She didn’t. She _doesn’t._

Their apology is long and tearful. Shirley explains her reservations. Annie understands. 

Things go back to the way they were, for a while…

Elijah and Jordan grow up. Shirley grows old, though she’s made peace with that by now. 

By the time her youngest is out in the world, away from home, she finally drags herself out of her state of quasi-retirement. With permission from Dean Pelton of Greendale Community College, Colorado, she opens up _Shirley’s Sandwiches_ in a little store a couple of blocks away, and can proudly say that she owns a chain cafe. 

It never does take off to the extent she might have hoped for as a younger woman, but the little cafe does become a sort of staple in her local suburb. She makes enough money to get by, to prove, once and for all, that she is not simply a _put-upon housewife_. 

(Elijah and Jordan brag often of their “ _famous_ ” mother, who allegedly inspired the hit webseries, _Hawthorne CC._ Shirley refrains from accepting this fame, claiming never to watch the show. Internet television isn’t really her thing, she’s too old.)

(However after a buzz is created concerning the season 1 finale, she, in a moment of weakness, caves and streams the entire thing. It takes her just over a week to catch up, and by the end, she has tears in her eyes.) 

(It’s just by coincidence that the very next day she happens to plan a group holiday, inviting everyone to stay at her place for a week before Christmas, while her boys are out of town.) 

* * *

Pierce thoroughly enjoys his time spent in the Indeterminable Non-Denominational Afterlife. He gets whatever he wants and makes fun of his old friends back on Earth and his jokes are _absolutely_ _hilarious,_ up here, suckers.


End file.
